The Bright Continent

I wrote a story for The Atlantic, on Dakar’s new airport and “The Hidden Costs of Africa’s Air Travel Boom.” In short, it’s magnificent that I have improved choices as I hop from Kampala, Uganda (from where I write this) and Nairobi, Kenya (where I live). But the abundance of new airlines, airports and routes—and the accompanying ease in travel—comes with a downside… 

Blaise Diagne International Airport (BDIA) is part of an exploding trend on the continent: air travel. Taking flight seems an elegant solution to a prominent African problem. The lamentable road infrastructure across many countries slows the formation of trade distribution networks, restricts movement for ordinary people, and subjects road-dependent economies to price shocks when the cost of fuel spikes. What’s more, tens of thousands of annual road accidents amount to a ruthless theft of African lives. …

It’s perfectly sensible for landlocked, overlooked and less populous African nations to reach for the skies. It follows the trajectory of more developed countries; Norway, for example, jump-started its economic growth once new shipping routes lowered barriers to exporting the average person’s goods.

But the rush to take flight may be ignoring more democratic transportation infrastructure. In the short term, planes simply do not create enough popular opportunity. Doctors, lawyers, businesspeople - they can export their services by airplane. Farmers and miners cannot. It’s no easy feat to fly cement, lumber, oil, medicine, or large harvests. For these and other development necessities, you need good roads, good rails and good networks of people. The craze for air travel may erode all three. While airlines grease the wheels of the briefcase set, it’s up to local government to ensure that these shiny new planes don’t enable the elite at the expense of the average citizen.

Read the whole thing! Photo by me.